Editorial: Gigs and garlands

Monday

Dec 4, 2017 at 12:01 AM

Part of the argument over the Senate’s proposed tax plan includes a maneuver called inversion — whereby American companies set up headquarters, even if only on paper, in foreign countries where tax rates are lower. Bloomberg recently reported that 36 U.S. companies used inversion to flee America between 2004 and 2016. That has depleted our economy of more than $500 billion.

Originally founded in 1953 in Jacksonville as Insta-Burger King, the company’s current identity relates to this date in 1954, when a pair of Insta-Burger franchisees in Miami, David Edgerton and Jim McLamore, partnered to open what is considered the first Burger King. Within a few years, they were successful enough to eventually acquire the parent company when it faltered financially. Edgerton and McLamore sold the firm to Pillsbury in 1967. BK has changed hands a few times since then, including being bought by companies in Britain and Brazil. But the company ignited a firestorm in August 2014 by inverting. It purchased Tim Horton’s, a Canadian chain of eateries, and shifted its corporate headquarters to Canada. ABC News reported at the time that BK would save $50 million a year in taxes.

Three years ago President Barack Obama criticized such deals. “I don’t care if it’s legal,” Obama said at one point, “it’s wrong.” Yet he did nothing to stop it — like, say, lower the U.S. corporate tax rate. Writing in The Wall Street Journal last week, Kenneth Frazier, the CEO of Merck, the pharmaceutical giant and another inverted firm, noted that 75 percent of those inversions have occurred since 2012, when Obama was re-elected.

GARLAND: We salute the Future Farmers of America students at Kathleen Middle School who took time over their Thanksgiving break to lay wreaths on the graves of 52 military veterans interred at Griffin Cemetery along Sleepy Hill Road. Jenna Barefoot, the students’ teacher, said the idea was to instill them with respect for veterans, their elders and their country. An innovative project, and well done.

GARLAND: Speaking of the intersection of history and education we commend Haines City resident Dolph Howard and the former graduates of the long-gone Oakland High School. Last month the city and the alumni association celebrated the installation of a marker designating the school’s former grounds as a Florida Heritage Site. For almost all of its 40-year history during the segregation era, Oakland was the high school for black students in eastern Polk County. Oakland High desegregated only after the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964; it closed in 1968, and was razed in 1977. The designation will help instruct future generations about a key piece of Polk County history, and reminds us now that the past, while not often pretty, still tells the story of where we’ve come from.

GIG: We gig GQ magazine, which recently named former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick its “Citizen of the Year.” The fashion magazine said it was “celebrating the man who became a movement” — a movement that, through displays that many fans consider disrespectful toward our flag and our military veterans, has hurt the NFL's popularity. Hey GQ, how about celebrating someone like Houston Texans defensive end J.J. Watt, who almost immediately after Hurricane Harvey united donors nationwide to raise $37 million in relief aid for residents of his town.

GIG: We gig Aramis Ayala, the elected prosecutor over in Orlando. Recall that Ayala stirred a controversy in the spring when she announced her office would not prosecute death penalty cases. After Gov. Rick Scott stripped more than two dozen capital punishment cases from her, and under considerable public pressure, Ayala relented and created an internal committee to review those cases. The prosecutor said she would accept the panel’s recommendation if it unanimously agreed the death penalty was warranted. In October they did, and she did, until she didn’t. Last month Ayala missed the mandatory deadline for filing notice of seeking the death penalty in the panel’s first recommendation, signaling she has another way to skirt Florida law and her pledge. Gig.

GARLAND: Polk County’s limited broadband access has earned it a reputation for being woefully on the wrong side of the digital divide. But the city of Lake Wales has worked to ease that. The city recently spent $25,000 to expand the number of publicly accessible Wi-Fi points around town from two to nine. The new sites include the library and Lake Wailes Park, where the city is seeing more event activity. Assistant City Manager James Slaton told The Ledger that public Wi-Fi is “an amenity that everyone expects.” He’s right, and we applaud the city for expanding this public service.

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